Researchers at Imperial College London are working to create an alcohol-like drug that would let imbibers experience a pleasant state of inebriation without worrying about becoming drunk, hungover, or physically addicted to the substance. Led by controversial neuropsychopharmacologist David Nutt, the team is looking at benzodiazepines — such as the main ingredient in Valium — to achieve the desired effect. Nutt envisions a world where drinking is safer, with fewer of the accidents and incidents currently related to alcohol.

The advantages of benzodiazepines, according to Nutt, is that they don't affect the brain's addiction centers in the way alcohol does and that they can be easily purged from the body with an antidote. Effectively, if Nutt's research pans out, he claims that drinkers would be able to "switch off" the effects of the faux alcohol by ingesting a pill.

Nutt and his fellow researchers are currently trying to find the benzodiazepine that most closely mimics the effects of alcohol. However, he is concerned that — even if he is successful — European governments will refuse to permit the sale of benzodiazeprine "alcohol," since benzos don't enjoy the same privileged history that alcohol does.

Alcohol substitute that avoids drunkenness and hangovers in development [Telegraph via reddit]

Heroin For Teens!

TMZ has a picture of Twilight Heroin baggies taken from West Hempstead, Long Island. Apparently they've been getting more popular these last few months.

Random Bitings

An ABC affiliate is reporting that a 17-year-old girl was bitten by a man after getting harassed in a New Moon screening.

The victim was watching the teen vampire romance movie with another friend when she says a man behind them started making sexual comments to them. After the movie was over, the man allegedly bit the girl on the neck. The bite did not break the girl's skin.

Ugh.

Vibrating Edward

And finally this super fan from Pillow Biters made a plastic pocket size vibrating Edward doll, and then had the actor who plays Jasper autograph it. Come on — you could of at least taped Jasper's face to it!

And thanks to New Moon.org for pointing out that you can make Edward and Jacob kiss in the new EW magazine spread.

A group of researchers in San Francisco published a paper in this week's Nature that explores one of the many mysteries about pain: Why do light touches near a recent injury feel so painful? The answer is more complicated than you might think. These post-trauma pains, called "mechanical pain," may be caused by a different mechanism than pain associated with injury itself. The researchers discovered that mechanical pain sensations are delivered from the injury site to the spinal cord via a chemical process that can easily be interrupted - just by blocking production of a protein called VGLUT3.

They based their analysis on experiments that proved mice lacking VGLUT3 experienced far less mechanical pain than their VGLUT3-producing cohort.

What this finding suggests is that we might be on the verge of discovering a new breed of painkillers that don't depress the entire nervous system (and fuzz out your brain), but instead interrupt specific pain pathways. In essence, you'd have a highly-targeted painkiller that would prevent your injuries from hurting while they heal. You could dull that pain without dulling your mind - and hopefully without addiction.

The researchers have yet to test on humans, but they do suggest that this could be a promising area of research for pain management.

via Nature

Image of VGLUT3 in inner ear cells (it's in red) via Human Molecular Genetics

Photographer Mathieu Young took these intimate pictures of a small pot farm at harvest time. We see the whole process, from the harvest in hidden greenhouses to the trimming, sorting, drying, and packaging for shipment. I keep imagining that they are growing lettuce and fruit to share with a small, underground collective of organic farmers who don't want to pay a licensing fee to farm. Or maybe I've just been reading too much Margaret Atwood.

See the whole amazing sequence of photos in this gallery by Mathieu Young [via Dose Nation]

Nanoparticles, objects less than 100 nanometers long in any direction, are already in use commercially and in medicine. Manufacturers integrate nanoparticles into socks to fight bacteria and odor (possibly poisoning wildlife in the process), and medical professionals use them in cancer research, brain imaging, and artificial hearts. But it looks like the era of nanoparticle-based drugs is just dawning, as one of the first such drugs has just passed animal testing.

So what does the first of these new wonder drugs treat? Erectile dysfunction. Researchers are working on a topical cream that employs nanoparticles to treat ED with fewer side effects. Nanoparticles are wrapped around traditional ED medications, allowing those medications to remain in their gaseous form until they are applied directly to the affected area. This allows the ED to be treated without the side effects that come with pills delivering the same medications, such as headaches, nausea, and dizziness.

Treating erectile dysfunction may not be on the same level as treating cancer, but the principles the researchers believe that the principles involved in their topical cream will apply to future nanoparticle-based drugs down the line. They have just finished a successful test of the cream on rats and plan a human trial some time in 2011.

The Era of Nanoparticle Drugs Begins With Erection Cream [Discover Magazine via Reddit]

A team of researchers in the UK explored the role of a protein known as S6K1, which turns out to play an extraordinary role in aging and age-related disease. When the researchers grew mice lacking the gene to produce S6K1, their mice lived significantly longer (see chart - the red lines are mice without S6K1). They also developed fewer age-related debilitating conditions.

Female mice without S6K1 lived slightly longer than their male counterparts, and over 160 days longer than the control group. That means the female mouse lifespan increased by twenty percent.

Mice without S6K1 also lost weight, even if they ate more than ordinary mice. In other words, a substance that could block the expression of S6K1 would trick the body into thinking that you'd gone on a very rigorous diet. And it would make you healthier into an older age. The best part?

In their paper, the researchers conclude:

It might be possible to develop drug treatments that manipulate S6K1 and AMPK to achieve improved overall health in later life. Indeed, short-term rapamycin treatment reduces adiposity in mice, and metformin treatment [often used against type 2 diabetes] extends lifespan in short-lived mice.

This is good news, because often when researchers make discoveries related to longevity there is no immediate pathway to manufacturing a life-extending drug. For all of us who want to stay healthy in old age while still eating sugar and fat once in a while, let's hope this research team starts testing a drug based on their S6K1 discovery - and soon.

via Science

In an article published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, Vince Cakic, a psychologist at the University of Sydney, notes the increasing use of nootropic "smart drugs" such as Provigil, Ritalin, and Dexedrine to boost academic performance rather than for their prescribed medical uses. And, he writes that as more students indulge in non-medical uses of these drugs, academic institutions may attempt to ban academic performance-enhancing drugs in the same manner as drugs for athletic performance. Athletic doping, he notes, has been notorious difficult to eliminate, and academic institutions could be pushed to extremes to try to eliminate nootropics. They could even, he imagines, require students to take urine tests before exams and throughout the semester.

This is less an issue for the current crop of nootropics, whose effect Cakic deems "modest." But there are more sophisticated drugs in the works, and he believes that soon better grades could be available in a little orange bottle. The question is: should schools bother to ban these drugs at all? Cakic points out that the academic playing field isn't exactly level to begin with, and some students benefit, perhaps unfairly, from expensive private education or having more time to study than fellow students who have to work. Perhaps, he writes, schools shouldn't regard nootropic use as cheating, though the issues don't end there:

The long term safety of smart drugs in healthy people is unknown, and this might prove a good, and perhaps the only, reason to attempt to restrict their use. Mr Cakic points to the use of caffeine, which is known to enhance sporting performance. It is a form of 'cheating' that is tolerated, he says, because it is relatively harmless.

Increase in 'academic doping' could spark routine urine tests for exam students [EurekaAlert]

In Surrogates, people stay at home all the time, and jack their brains into glamorous, super-strong robot bodies, so you don't have to risk getting hurt or let people see your bad skin. Mostow explains to us how it all works.

So explain to me how this stem chair works, how does it save people from bed sores if they sit in it all day?

If you literally were in a chair all day long, you would have to worry about things like bed sores. But in the movie, they have these fantastic chairs that are constantly stimulating your body parts so you never have to suffer from those problems.

But how do they eat and go to the bathroom?

Well you have to get up occasionally, things like that technology can't do for you. There are a couple moments in the movie where the surrogate is completely immobilized and you find out that their operator was in the bathroom or getting a snack or something. Basically your Surrogate freezes in the action of whatever it's doing, and you can go into action and go and do whatever it is you need to do — then go back online. It's no different [than] if you were in a chat room, and you got up and and had a salad in the refrigerator and then come back. Everybody who was talking to you would just see a blinking cursor for a moment.

I've seen in the trailers that you can customize your Surrogates and I believe I saw one Surrogate with eyes on the side of its head. What else can you do?

Actually that's one of the few scenes that's not in the movie anymore. We have a scene in a bar where the bartender had put eyes in the side of his head so he can be helping out one customer, yet seeing what the patrons at the other end of the bar wanted. That's actually no longer in the movie, but there are other customized Surrogates in the movie. Most people chose to have an idealized version of themselves, but some people chose to completely change their identity. Some people chose to change their gender.

You see a girl who has literally put spikes coming out of her skull — metal spikes. She's gone a bit punk with their Surrogate. And there are Surrogates who have completely changed their skin color. We don't spend a whole lot of time on that because it's not germane to the central plot of the movie. But it was an idea that we wanted to pay some lip service to.

My personal favorite things about movies in the "not so distant future" are the little things that the crew and writers come up with, the things that set it apart as the future.

We have a lot of blink-and-you-may-miss-it details like that. I made the decision, early in preproduction, to do what the graphic novel did: even though it's set in the future, he made the world look like it does today, just with Surrogates in it. I didn't want this to be a movie where the question was, "hey do you think cars are really going to look like that in the future, will they be flying around?" These are the question marks that can distract you, when you watch a movie that is set in the future. So I said, let's just make this movie in the near future, and this technology will have come a long way very quickly. So it looks like the world we live in but it's just populated with all these robots.

What was that thing in the trailer that the Surrogates were stabbing themselves with, it looked like a drug or electricity or something like that?

There's a scene in the movie with something called "the jacker," and it's at a party. There's this glass tube that's sending this blue energy. There's a party scene where Bruce's wife is home with some friends and she's a Surrogate and they are all Surrogates too. And they are engaged in this sort of communal thing... that is, sort of... it's unclear if it's a drug-like thing, is it sort of a sexual thing, is it a combination of the two? And it basically is giving these people back in their stem chairs at home a rush by applying this energy field to their Surrogates.

Well how well policed is this Surrogates program? It seems to be owned by a private company, and yet the police use them as well?

Think of it like Microsoft, where Microsoft is a private company but everyone from law enforcement to criminals use their software. This company is the leading manufacturer of Surrogate robots and it spread like wildfire...There's no formal relationship between the government and the Surrogates.

What did Bruce Willis think about the idealized version of himself?

Bruce was an active participant in all that. We explored a lot of different looks and settled on this look as the best choice. The best thing about Bruce is he's in such good shape and a good looking guy we were able to make him look younger with a variety of old fashioned techniques and some CGI. And for his real self, we were able to make him look like he had more milage on him, with a series of old fashioned film techniques, and with his own performance. As opposed to getting a guy who's 25-years-old and [trying to] make him look 50, Bruce was the perfect guy for this film.

Was it his decision to make his ideal robot self blond? That's some beautiful robot hair there.

We wanted something where you look at it and say I've never seen Bruce Willis look like that before. We wanted something to catch your attention. And that's the whole point, people don't look like themselves. And in Bruce's character's mind he'd like to look as if he was 20 years younger.

This kind of marketing reminds me of Max Barry's novel Jennifer Government, where shoe companies arrange for public shootings to promote their sneakers as authentically gangsta. Obviously smoking Salvia isn't the same thing as shooting somebody - the drug is harmless, though it does deliver brief, intense hallucinations. But there is something creepy about the way this video tries to use "real life underground culture" to promote a movie which is about drugs. The dumb part, or rather the overarchingly dumb part, is that Salvia is nothing like the drug in Reckoning Day, which you can see described in the trailer below as like super speed or something.

So basically this is viral video marketing fail for two reasons: 1. It's creepy to film people taking drugs to market a movie; and 2. The drugs they are taking are unrelated to the movie.

Still, it makes you wonder about the future of viral marketing. Vids of teen girls cutting themselves to market New Moon? Sounds so authentic!

via UTalk Marketing

Specifically, dopamine is responsible for making you remember frightening experiences in the long term, rather than forgetting them right away.

Researchers studied the effect of dopamine on rats who had been terrified by having their paws electrically shocked. What the scientists discovered was that dopamine had no affect on the rats' memories if it was given shortly after the shock. But if the rats were given chemicals that reduced the amount of dopamine absorbed by their neurons about 12 hours later - roughly the time it takes for the brain to consolidate long-term memories - they forgot the painful experience quickly and walked right onto the foot-shocking device again. However, rats who received chemicals 12 hours later that enhanced the amount of dopamine absorbed remembered the foot-shocking device far longer than they might have otherwise. Their fear of foot shock remained quite vivid.

Let this be a lesson to all authoritarian regimes who want to rule with fear and drugs. Feed your population with dopamine promoters 12 hours after the public executions. Their terror and awe will last a lot longer, and you'll get a bigger bang for each buck you pay your death squads.

via Science

Endocannabinoids interact with canniboid receptors the same way the chemical THC in marijuana does. According to a study published this afternoon in Science, the endocannabinoid system is more complex than previously believed. Sometimes a spike in endocannabinoids in the spinal cord releases neurotransmitter chemicals that make people more likely to feel pain.

A release about the article from Science puts it this way:

Often, in cases of chronic pain, neuron-to-neuron communication is bumped up in a specific area of the spinal cord. Endocannabinoids (which are the body's version of the THC in marijuana) have been thought to suppress this type of pain signaling, but Alejandro Pernía-Andrade and an international team of colleagues now show that the opposite may be true. They found that in rats and mice, painful stimuli can release endocannabinoids in the spinal cord, which act on a group of neuronal receptors called the CB1 receptors. This action reduced the release of key neurotransmitters that shuttle from one neuron to another, with the overall effect of making the neurons more excitable and thereby sensitizing the animals to certain forms of pain, or even to simple touch. In another experiment, on human volunteers, the authors found that the drug rimonabant, which blocks CB1 receptors, decreased pain sensitivity that had been induced in patches of the volunteers' skin.

We're a long way from being able to control this pain/not-pain system, but knowing that it's there means more research into it is inevitable. Already endocannabinoids are a target for a lot of hopeful pharmaceutical companies, who hope to manipulate the substance to treat everything from chronic pain to obesity.

My question is whether this substance could also become the target of military research too, since being able to control whether a person feels pain or not is a classic torture technique. And doing it cleanly, with drugs, could be classified as "humane" under many systems of regulation. Plus, what's a better way to play pharmaceutical good cop/bad cop than to administer a drug that causes pain - then eases it?

via Science

For the new study, British investigators at Keele University Medical School compared trends in cannabis use and instances of schizophrenia in the United Kingdom from 1996 to 2005. The research showed that even as marijuana use soared among the general population, "incidence and prevalence of schizophrenia and psychoses were either stable or declining" during this period . . . The results of another clinical trial published earlier this month indicate that the recreational use of marijuana does not affect brain chemistry in a way that is consistent with the development of schizophrenia.

"Should we expect an apology — or even better, a change in policy — from the Gordon Brown regime any time soon? Or at the very least, will some sort of 'correction' be forthcoming from the mainstream news media?" asked Paul Armentano, deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). "I wouldn't hold my breath."

via SF Weekly

A group of Spanish researchers reported today in Science that they may have stumbled upon a substance that could become the ultimate memory-enhancer. The group was studying a poorly-understood region of the visual cortex. They found that if they boosted production of a protein called RGS-14 (pictured) in that area of the visual cortex in mice, it dramatically affected the animals' ability to remember objects they had seen.

Mice with the RGS-14 boost could remember objects they had seen for up to two months. Ordinarily the same mice would only be able to remember these objects for about an hour.

The researchers concluded that this region of the visual cortex, known as layer six of region V2, is responsible for creating visual memories. When the region is removed, mice can no longer remember any object they see.

If this protein boosts visual memory in humans, the implications are staggering. In their paper, the researchers say that it could be used as a memory-enhancer – which seems like an understatement. What's particularly intriguing is the fact that this protein works on visual memory only. So as I mentioned earlier, it would be perfect for mapping. It would also be useful for engineers and architects who need to hold a lot of visual images in their minds at once. And it would also be a great drug for detectives and spies.

Could it also be a way to gain photographic memory? For example, if I look at a page of text will I remember the words perfectly? Or will I simply remember how the page looked?

I can't see much of a downside for this potential drug, unless the act of not forgetting what you see causes problems or trauma.

via Science

If aliens come to Earth, you can bet they'll be looking for a new dealer. Turns out the wallabies of Tasmania have been getting high in the medical poppy fields and crank-calling the stars with phony crop circles, for some time now.

The wallabies were breaking in and eating the poppy heads, then running about in circles, the hooligans.

Attorney-General Lara Giddings explains:

"The one interesting bit that I found recently in one of my briefs on the poppy industry was that we have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles...
Then they crash. We see crop circles in the poppy industry from wallabies that are high."

It just goes to prove, the truth is out there.

[The Mercury]

There's clearly a competitive aspect to this enhancement, and that disturbs many of us. The use of cognitive drugs is driven, at least in part, by a perceived need to keep up with colleagues and rivals. The fear is, how much longer will it be possible for someone to reject the use of these drugs and still maintain competitive parity? If everyone else vying for the promotion uses modafinil to stay awake for 20 hours/day, can you afford not to? Given that the long-term effect of these drugs is still poorly-understood, however, is it at all ethical to allow this kind of "slippery-slope" scenario to come about? Even a broad national consensus against using cognitive enhancement drugs may crumble if another country chooses to accept—even encourage—their use. We may face a choice between altering our brain chemistries and falling behind in the global economy.

Check out the whole article at Fast Company.

I Come In Peace is pretty much an all-time classic, thanks to inserting an alien thug into the standard buddy-cop cliches. There are two cops, and they don't get along even though they both have unorthodox methods for cleaning up the streets. And then it turns out the main baddie is an alien, who's just the first of millions of alien endorphin-harvesting drug dealers — unless Dolph and his partner Brian Benben can stop him. There are fight scenes, shootouts and car chases, all of it to the tunes of Miami Vice's Jan Hammer. Really, what's not to like? [IMDB]

These movies are totally in the order that they popped into my head, dudes. You want me to put them in some kind of ranking? What? Can't you get a UNIX script to do that, or, like, somebody who isn't completely wasted?

Greatest Stoner Science Fiction Evar, In the Order That They Popped Into My Head, With a Few Reasons

2001
The spaceships are so cool and slow. Plus, there's like this baby thing, and a bunch of stars . . . seriously, what does it all mean? Are we one with the universe or is the universe like inside us?

Donnie Darko
Jake Gyllenhaal is totally cute, plus his name is spelled really weird. Also, there are like evil bunnies and mirror worlds and what is that giant black cloud? Seriously that cloud is freaking me out.

Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure
Time travel plus George Carlin plus babes from the Middle Ages plus, uh . . .

Buckeroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
OK so there are these aliens, right? And they are doing something that's really hard to figure out. But it doesn't matter because there's MUSIC and a really fast car going into a mountain and Jeff Goldblum looking smokin and geeky.

They Live
OK so there are these aliens, right? And they are controlling our minds! They are making us buy things we don't need! Luckily Rowdy Roddy Piper is there to TOTALLY KICK THEIR ASSES.

City of Lost Children
What the hell is going on here? Deformed people wreathed in smoke who are kidnapping kids. Luckily Hellboy is there to rescue them, but he's not wearing his Hellboy outfit. This is too scary for me.

Dark Crystal
Essence of gelfling!!!

Tamala 2010 Punk Rock Cat in Space
So she's an anime punk cat. In space. And she goes to another planet, where she meets gay aliens. WTF?

Predator
Dude! Arnie versus an invisible alien dude who is way cooler than Arnie and later turns into the awesome guy with dreads who vanquishes the aliens from Alien!

A Scanner Darkly
This is seriously trippy - there's like this cop, who is spying on drug dealers, but the drug dealers might actually be him, or maybe his friends. And there are all these people covered in bugs, plus a devious plot to spy on spies. And it's funny too.

The Matrix
Take the red pill! If you do, you can totally go to a rave and have sex in the sequel!

Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy
You haven't seen this yet? It's the kickass Canadian comedy troupe in a movie about a freaky new drug that is turning everybody into brainless pleasure-munchers. I can't even describe it. You have to see it!!!

Dune
It's about a teenager who takes drugs and becomes the master of the universe. Need I say more?

Grindhouse, pt II: Planet Terror
There's the chick with the gun for a leg, and then there's like alien goo zombies. Maybe not in that order.

Wizard of Oz, but with the sound off, but with Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon playing
A bunch of the older kids told me this would be really cool, but it seems kind of lame. Let's go see Crank High Voltage instead, dudes.

Crank High Voltage
In theaters now! Do not even attempt to see this movie without smoking a joint in the alley outside the theater first. Because there's a guy with a gun in his ass! And fucking on the racetrack! Jason Statham is the 21st Century Everyman, man.

The Wall
Oh man this is totally a freaky bummer except for the part where the flowers have sex - except whoa! even that is kind of a bummer.

Heavy Metal
Remember when Black Sabbath totally was awesome? That was five minutes ago, dude. When we were watching the scene with Black Sabbath's song "Mob Rules"? Oh yeah.

Speed Racer
Zoomy light! Cars upsidown! Crazy Vikings! Vroooooom!

Ghost in the Shell
A cyborg goes on a strange, incomprehensible journey that sheds light on the true meaning of selfhood. Seriously deep.

12 Monkeys
WHAT IS HAPPENING? Time travel, animal experimentation, assassination, dystopia, epidemic! Poor Bruce Willis. Can he ever escape the paradox of destiny?

Army of Darkness
Bruce Campbell fights an army of skeletons in the Dark Ages with one arm turned into a chainsaw. May I just say FUCK YEAH!

Brain Damage
A guy accidentally becomes attached to a penis-shaped parasite named Ayler who injects his brain with mega-heroin and sings show tunes and hides in his pants so he can eat the brains of hookers giving him a blow job. Seriously this is one of the most awesome movies ever made, but you can only appreciate it if you take a bong hit. So take one.

The latest news on the long-term effects of Ecstasy come via the New Scientist, which reports:

Enough time has finally elapsed to start asking if ecstasy damages health in the long term. According to the biggest review ever undertaken, it causes slight memory difficulties and mild depression, but these rarely translate into problems in the real world. While smaller studies show that some individuals have bigger problems, including weakened immunity and larger memory deficits, so far, for most people, ecstasy seems to be nowhere near as harmful over time as you may have been led to believe.

But just when you thought it was safe to get high, suddenly pot becomes more dangerous that you'd previous suspected, claims a new medical study:

The study was the work of researchers from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington, and other centres in the US and is published early online in the journal Cancer. The study results show that being a marijuana smoker at the time of diagnosis was linked to a 70 per cent higher risk of testicular cancer. For men who smoked marijuana at least once a week or who had been smoking it since their teens, the risk was about double that of a man who had never smoked it.

On the plus side, those "Truth: The Anti-Drug" advertisements now have a much easier sell than "Your friend's eyes are red, that sucks."

Ecstasy's legacy: So far, so good [New Scientist], Testicular Cancer Risk Linked To Marijuana Smoking [Medical News Today]

A Massachusetts company called GTC Therapeutics manufactures ATryn, which is designed to help people with blood-clotting disorders. Though ATryn is unlikely to become a blockbuster drug, since it aids only a small part of the population, its approval opens the door for more pharmed drugs to hit the market. But why genetically engineer a herd of goats instead of just making drugs the old-fashioned way?

According to the New York Times:

Proponents say such "pharm animals" could become a means of producing biotechnology drugs at lower cost or in greater quantities than the existing methods - which include extracting proteins from donated human blood or growing them in large steel vats of genetically engineered cells.

The protein in the goat milk, antithrombin, is sometimes in short supply or unavailable for pharmaceutical use because of a shortage of human plasma donations. GTC Biotherapeutics said one of its goats can produce as much antithrombin in a year as can be derived from 90,000 blood donations. And if more drug is needed, the herd can be expanded.

More pharmed drugs are already in production, including a cure for hereditary angioedema (a disorder that causes tissue swelling) produced in the milk of GMO rabbits.

SOURCES:

The Great Beyond [blog for Nature journal]

New York Times